The Empty Room
by englishtutor
Summary: When Mary was brutally assaulted at age sixteen, she was told that internal damage had rendered her infertile. But after she met John Watson, she began to believe in miracles.
1. Chapter 1

"I may have inadvertently set your table on fire." Sherlock's voice reached them from the kitchen of Mary and John's flat. Molly looked up from her paintbrush with alarm and met Mary's eyes, which were crinkled in exasperated amusement.

"Well, then, it's a good job I put the fire extinguisher by your chair, isn't it?" Mary called back imperturbably through her dust mask.

"Ah." They could hear the sound of the extinguisher spraying. By this time, the acrid scent of burning wood and chemicals was wafting into the little spare bedroom, mixing with the smell of fresh paint that already permeated the flat. "That was foresighted of you, Mary," Sherlock commended her, just as the smoke alarm began to beep frantically.

"Not really," Molly's long-suffering friend sighed. "Just experienced. Please turn on the exhaust fan in the kitchen and take the batteries out of the smoke alarm." Amazingly, they heard the fan turn on and the alarm cut off mid-wail. Molly was once again struck by Mary's uncanny ability to get Sherlock to cooperate with her. Although she was sorely tempted to go into the kitchen to survey the damage to her friend's table, she followed Mary's example and stolidly returned to painting the walls of the little bedroom a lovely burgundy red while Mary trimmed the woodwork in an antique gold. Not for Mary's baby a room of pastels or primary colours. Her idea of a nursery looked more like what one would think of a Victorian parlour.

"Why do you let him conduct experiments on your kitchen table?" Molly wanted to know.

Mary smiled behind her mask. "He assures me they're necessary to this case he's working on. Who am I to say otherwise? I'm certainly not about to stand in the way of The Work."

"Where is your med kit?" Sherlock called in his 'this is so tedious' tone of voice.

"Oh, lord, did you burn yourself, Sweetheart?" Mary put down her brush and looked in annoyance at her paint-covered hands. She bustled into the kitchen, wiping her hands on a rag. "Let me have a look."

Sherlock's hands whipped behind his back and he faced her stoically. "It's nothing."

Not being fools, both women knew exactly what 'nothing' meant. Molly watched in fascination as Mary stood, her face stern, holding out one hand and Sherlock, a picture of resolve, looked his opponent in the eye and refused to comply. The stand-off lasted several breathless minutes as none of them moved. Finally, Sherlock sighed. "You're not going to go away, are you?"

Mary's mask moved with her smile. "No."

"I suppose it is expedient for a doctor to look at it," Sherlock conceded and gave her his hand. Mary gently pried open his fingers and gave them a cursory examination.

"Well, no skin grafts this time," she reassured him. "I can treat this here. Molly, would you go get my med kit from under my bed?"

Molly, happy to have something useful to do, fetched the large, well-equipped medical case from John and Mary's room while Mary scrubbed up. As she worked over Sherlock's relatively minor burns, she said to Molly, "What were you saying?"

"Oh, I meant . . . why doesn't he do these experiments at his own flat?" Molly explained. She had been glad to accept Mary's invitation to help her paint the baby's room and keep her company while John was out of town; she had been surprised when she arrived to find Sherlock ensconced in the kitchen with a mini-laboratory installed on the table.

"Ah," Mary nodded, not looking up from her work. "Well, you remember when I was kidnapped a couple of months ago? Those computer-crime chaps who were avenging their father? Well, John was quite upset by that. He hasn't felt comfortable leaving me alone since then." Molly thought of her examination of the body of Mary's kidnapper—the one with the neat, little bullethole right between his eyes. Yes, John had indeed been upset. "And now that we know a little one is on the way, he's even more concerned about my safety. He's so accommodating of my own little quirks, I don't mind indulging him with his. When Harry called and asked him to help her move to Dublin, he very sweetly asked me for the sake of his nerves to either go stay at Sherlock's or let him come here to stay with me. I don't want him to worry. I don't mind the company, anyway."

"I'm meant to be looking after you, not the other way round," Sherlock muttered under his breath.

Mary looked fondly at him. "We're meant to be looking after each other. That's what friends do: look after each other. You dispatch any criminals that attack us, and I'll administer any medical aid necessary. There, you're all patched up. Back to work with you," she patted him gently and returned to her own task in the spare room, Molly in her wake.

"You'll be a good mother, Mary," Molly said admiringly as she took up her paintbrush once more.

Mary snorted. "I've had a lot of practice lately," she observed. "John says I'm too indulgent, though. He's the disciplinarian of the family. He thinks I let Sherlock get away with murder."

"Why didn't you just go to Dublin with John?" Molly asked curiously.

"Harry doesn't like me," Mary said bluntly. From the next room, Sherlock declared in an annoyed tone, "She can't dislike you. She's never met you."

Mary chuckled ruefully. "All right, then. She disapproves of me. Thinks I'm much too young to have a serious relationship with her very important and emotionally vulnerable brother. That's why she refused to come to the wedding. I suppose she thinks I'll get a new whim and move on eventually. I just wonder how long it will take before she realizes I'm not going anywhere. Perhaps when she finds out she's about to be an aunt she'll come around. In the meantime, it seems best just to avoid antagonizing her."

"Mary, did you know you were pregnant when you were kidnapped?" Molly wanted to know. She moved the step ladder along the wall and climbed up to paint near the ceiling.

"Heavens, no. Think how much more upset John would have been if we'd known."

Molly tried and failed to imagine the condition the kidnapper might have been in if John had been more upset.

"We didn't find out until several weeks later," Mary continued. "I'm twelve weeks along now, can you believe it?" She absently-mindedly rubbed her belly, smearing paint on her smock.

"You haven't told me how John reacted when you told him," Molly prompted. She had been living vicariously through her friend for quite some time, now. Impending motherhood was yet another thing that Mary had achieved which Molly was so far denied. She did not resent Mary's good fortune in life, but she did want in on all the juicy details so that she might experience them at a remove.

Mary chuckled. "I never did. He told me." She looked up from the baseboard she was painting at her friend's incredulous face, her eyes grinning over her mask. "He IS a doctor, after all. I was exhibiting all the signs, apparently, but it was completely off my radar. I'd been told when I was sixteen that I'd never be able to bear children, so it just never occurred to me to consider the possibility. So I come home from work one day and he hands me a test kit and strongly suggests I give it a go. He's right about most things, my Captain," she said warmly.

"So then, how did Sherlock react when he heard the news?" Molly climbed back down the ladder to finish the bottom of the section of wall she was working on.

Mary snorted. "Oh, about like you'd imagine: with utter horror. He spent the next few days explaining to us all the reasons this is a terrible idea; all true and all completely irrelevant. I mean, what did he think we could do about it now? Anyway, John finally was fed up and told him to stop it. 'You gave me a million reasons why I shouldn't get married,' he said. 'And now aren't you glad I ignored you?' Sherlock gave that some thought and then he said, 'It doesn't inconvenience me nearly so much as I had anticipated, most of the time.'" The girls laughed together companionably. Then Mary grasped her stomach with a look of pain crossing her face.

Molly was concerned. "Are you okay?"

Mary's tense expression relaxed. "It's just cramp. Happens when I laugh." She took the ladder Molly had abandoned and positioned it so as to access the lintel of the doorway. She had just placed one foot on the bottom rung when Sherlock's commanding voice rang out: "Mary, you will NOT climb that ladder. We had an agreement, had we not?"

Mary froze in place and sighed. "How did he know?" she muttered crossly, no longer climbing but not removing her foot either.

"Mary, I insist you comply," Sherlock said sternly. "I will not hesitate to call John if you do not."

Mary stepped down and backed away from the ladder. "Tattle-tale!" she complained.

"Reckless dare-devil," he countered tonelessly.

"I won't be naming the baby after you now," she called, her eyes twinkling.

"I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear it," Sherlock replied sarcastically, to both the girls' amusement.

000

Molly sat in the hospital waiting room on the edge of her chair, trying to control her nervousness. When Sherlock called her, waking her at 2 a.m., he had simply said that Mary needed her and instructed her to come immediately to West London hospital. Now that she was here, she found that Mary did not need her now, after all—Mary was in surgery undergoing D & C for complications in her miscarriage of the baby. It was Sherlock who needed her, but she did not know how to help him. She did not know how to help herself. She felt tears tracking down her face. Poor Mary. Her friend, so afraid of losing people she cared about, had just lost someone she'd never even had a chance to meet; someone she'd only just found out about six weeks ago. It was so unfair.

Sherlock sat texting John and looking more and more uncomfortable. Molly tried to think of something to say. "Is he . . . is John on the way?" she said inanely. Of course he was on his way. John would run all the way home from Dublin if he had to, Irish Sea notwithstanding, to get to his Mary.

"Mycroft has arranged for a private jet for him. He'll be here within the hour," Sherlock said in a lifeless monotone. He looked up at her, his face a careful blank. "I promised John I'd look after her."

"You did!" Molly exclaimed, surprised. "You brought her straight here, just where she needed to be. What more could you have done?"

Sherlock shook his head. "I should have seen it sooner. She'd been having pain since yesterday, since you and she were painting the room. She was in denial, kept saying it was nothing. Doctors are rubbish patients," he muttered disparagingly. "If John had been here, he'd have brought her in yesterday."

Molly sighed and palmed away her tears. "You might be right. John's a doctor, he's trained to notice such things. But it wouldn't have made any difference, Sherlock, the baby was . . . the baby was already . . . gone. You couldn't have done anything to prevent this happening. This is not . . . this is in no way your fault." She dared to reach out and put a comforting hand on his arm. He allowed it to stay there, hardly seeming to notice.

He answered yet another text, frowning. "They text back and forth constantly but she never told him she was in pain. He's . . . angry." Sherlock was as distressed as Molly had ever seen him.

"He's not . . . he isn't angry with you, Sherlock," she assured him. "He's not angry with Mary, either, if that's what you think. He's just . . . angry . . . with the situation. It's normal to be angry when something like this happens."

Sherlock stared at the wall. "Caring is not an advantage," he muttered under his breath."If this had been anyone else, I'd have been able to do what needed to be done without a second thought. But when John or Mary need me, I . . . . She had to tell me what to do. She was bleeding profusely and in pain and she had to tell me what to do."

Molly thought about The Accident last spring—when Sherlock had accidentally stabbed John in the back. John had had to tell Sherlock what to do then, thereby saving his own life. Sherlock had beat himself up over that incident for a long time afterwards. She tried to think of something useful to say.

"Relationships make us strong," she almost whispered. "Caring makes us human."

Sherlock snorted derisively. "My friendship with John and Mary has put them each in danger a number of times. They would be better off if they had never met me."

Before Molly could think of a reply to this rare personal confession, a nurse appeared in the doorway. "Are you here for Mary Watson?"

They both rose to their feet. "I brought her here," Sherlock said.

"Well, she had the procedure and a blood transfusion. She's asleep now, but she's going to be all right."

"May we sit with her?" Molly asked, weak with relief.

The nurse hesitated. "No one's meant to go back there but next of kin."

"Her husband's out of town. He's on the way, but it may be a while yet. Please, we're all the family she has. I don't want her to wake up and be alone," Molly pleaded. The nurse relented easily, and they followed her to Mary's room.

Mary's face was as white as the pillow her head rested upon. She was turned away from them as they stood over her in silence. Molly reached out a gentle hand and brushed the hair away from Mary's eyes. "I'm sorry," she murmured softly. "I'm so sorry." She had the distinct idea that her friend was not asleep, although she was completely unresponsive. Molly stroked Mary's hair and hoped that it was a bit of comfort.

Sherlock, meanwhile, examined Mary's medical file and texted its contents to her husband. "Mycroft sent a helicopter to the airport to bring John directly here," he reported. "He'll be here soon."

"Good." Molly felt flooded with relief. She was glad to be there for her friend, but Mary needed John right now. And, she was certain, John needed Mary just as much. "Poor John," she sighed sympathetically. "Dealing with this all alone all this time. He must be half mad with worry. At least Mary had you to help her."

Sherlock was perplexed. "How does having people with you help?"

Molly wondered how to explain this concept to someone who clearly had little emotional experience. "People make us stronger. It's easier to cope with things when you know you're not alone."

"Alone protects me," Sherlock objected. "People complicate things. Make you vulnerable." Molly could think of nothing to say. She wondered what sort of childhood he must have had to have developed such a cynical and dismal philosophy.

At last, John rushed in, breathless, having run all the way down from the roof where the helicopter had deposited him. "How is she?" he demanded in a whisper.

"She hasn't moved since we came in here," Sherlock reported. "But she isn't sleeping."

John moved to Mary's bedside and sat on the edge of the bed. He stroked her face gently, and she began to sob. He took her into his arms and she lay limp against him, weeping silently, as he murmured comfort to her. He would be strong for her until she was well enough to be strong for him in return—then it would be John's turn to grieve.

Molly drew Sherlock out of the room respectfully, but they remained just outside in case they should be needed. They watched as John consoled his grieving wife. Molly realized then the main difference between John and Sherlock. John drew his strength from being useful. So long as he could be useful, he could cope with anything. Sherlock drew his strength from being in control. When events were out of the detective's control, he could no longer keep his own emotions at bay; and not understanding emotions, he was completely unable to deal with them. Molly marvelled that Sherlock was capable of maintaining the few friendships he had. She wondered if she would ever be able to move from the fringes of his society as a colleague and become one of his few real friends.

The answer came immediately, much to her surprise. As she was musing on these things, Sherlock turned to her and said, "Thank you for coming. As you suggested, I believe your presence has helped me to cope, and I'm certain you helped Mary. You're a good friend."

Molly smiled sadly: a small triumph drawn from tragedy. The price was too high.


	2. Chapter 2

He held her until her sobs subsided and she lay limp and crumpled against him, utterly spent. She had not spoken one word since he'd arrived, breathless and worried, at her hospital bedside, but had only clung to him with a terrible desperation. His own silent tears had dampened her hair, his cheek resting on the top of her head, and he felt so entirely useless, unable to think of anything to say except the obvious ("I'm here") and the untrue ("it'll be okay"). Their child was gone. After only twelve weeks of existence, it was over. That would never be okay. John pushed his own grief deliberately aside and concentrated his attention on comforting Mary. She was the one who just nearly bled out, who suffered untold pain. She was the one whose belly was now empty. He would have time to grieve later, when she was stronger.

Her sobs had given way to shuddering breaths, and then she slowly dropped into a doze, still feeling the effect of the general anaesthesia; but still he held her, unable to let her go. He had been almost 400 miles away from her when he had received Sherlock's frantic text: "Come home at once. On our way to hospital." A thousand possible scenarios had flooded his imagination, but the most plausible one had been the truth. Miscarriage. He ought never to have left London. He ought to have been there with her. Instead, he had still been en route while she went into emergency surgery, still on his way when she awoke from recovery. He felt he had failed her completely.

The adrenaline that had surged through him the moment he read the first text from Sherlock had put his every system on red alert and kept him going all that long night—and now it was deserting him, leaving him wrung-out and shaking. Concerned that his trembling arms would disturb her much-needed rest, he lowered her onto the pillows and smoothed the damp hair from her swollen, tear-streaked face. A wave of tenderness swept through him. His strong, fearless Mary looked like a fragile child, her expression troubled even in her sleep. It infuriated him that she should be subjected to yet another tragedy. John bent and kissed her forehead, and she stirred a bit in her sleep.

"John?" she whispered.

"I'm here," he assured her gently, stroking her hair.

Her lips pulled up slightly into the trembling smile. "Okay," she sighed, and went back to sleep.

He watched her until he was satisfied that she would remain asleep for a while, and then he stalked from the room to the nearest family waiting area on the floor. Yes, Sherlock was still there, slumped in one of those torturous plastic chairs, focused on a point in the air midway across the room. The detective slowly turned his gaze to his friend's face.

"Is she all right?" he asked tentatively.

"She's asleep," John replied. "She's not all right. I'm not all right." He paced around the room, the rage that had been building up in him for hours now boiling to the surface. This was a safe place to vent; Sherlock was a safe person to vent upon. John had an intense need to vent.

"You're angry," Sherlock observed helpfully, getting him started.

"Damn it, yeah, I'm bloody furious," John agreed through gritted teeth.

Sherlock hesitated to continue, watching John intently. "But, not . . . not at me," he concluded, some relief in his tone.

John stopped his relentless motion to stare at his friend. "At you? Why the hell would I be angry with you? You've never been anything but kind to Mary. You're even polite to her most of the time. You probably saved her life, getting her here so quickly."

"I thought I was negligent, not having seen the symptoms earlier. I should have brought her here sooner." Sherlock shook his head repentantly. "You would have done so."

John sighed. "It wouldn't have mattered. The result would have been the same. You were there for her tonight when she needed you. That's a hell of a lot more than I managed to do. That's more than most of the people in her life have managed to do."

"You're angry with yourself," Sherlock stated. "But there's no need to be. You arrived in record time."

"Thanks to Mycroft's intervention. Never thought I'd be saying that!" John muttered bitterly. "I should never have left. Harry could just as easily have moved to Dublin without my help." He started in on his pacing again. "We've been living in a fantasy-world, these past few weeks. In the back of my mind, I knew it all along, but I didn't want to think about it. And she's been living in denial ever since she found out about the baby." John's voice broke and he had to stop speaking, but his pacing increased in intensity.

Sherlock's eyes followed him around the room for a while. "You are referring to the internal damage she apparently suffered as an adolescent," he concluded.

John stopped and turned on him. "How do you know about that?"

The detective shrugged. "I perused her medical files while we were waiting for you to arrive. She has an extensive medical record. Broken bones, internal injuries, quite a long hospital stay at age sixteen."

A chair flew across the room and crashed into the wall. John looked from his now painful foot to the bent ruin of plastic and chrome ruefully. "Sorry."

"No, you're not."

"No, I'm not." John resumed pacing frenetically, his fists clenched in fury.

"She's never spoken to you about what happened?" Sherlock prompted, as gently as he was capable of speaking.

"Never," John rasped in frustration. "All she's ever told me about her past is that her mother died when she was four, and her father sent her off to be passed around among distant relatives and dubious friends until he disappeared himself. I've only guessed at what must have happened to her during that time, based on her behaviour and medical files. It's obvious that she suffered neglect and abuse throughout her childhood, and was brutalized and raped when she was sixteen. But she's never mentioned it to me. Not even a hint. I don't. . . ." he stopped moving, stopped talking, took some deep breaths to gain control of himself. "I don't know why."

Sherlock looked puzzled. "Why did you never ask?"

John sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "Don't think I haven't wanted to. But I won't try to pry it out of her. That would be needlessly cruel, just to satisfy my own need to know. If she can't talk about it, I won't try to force her to. She'll tell me what she wants me to know when she's ready." Pacing again, he kicked over another chair. "The bastard who hurt her has effectively hurt her again, and cost the life of our child. If I ever find out . . . ." A third chair paid the price of his impotent rage.

"Perhaps this is why Mary hasn't told you about it. She may not wish to be married to a convicted felon and spend her life visiting you in prison," Sherlock remarked dryly, and John laughed mirthlessly.

He sank into the chair next to his friend and buried his face in his hands. "I never even looked at her medical records before she got pregnant. But the obstetrician pointed it out to me, said it was such a miracle that she was able to conceive at all. I knew, in the back of my mind, that he was trying to warn me that she wasn't likely to be able to carry to term. I didn't want to know that. We wanted to believe it could happen, that we could have this . . . ." He trailed off and went silent. Sherlock sat awkwardly and tapped his steepled fingers to his lips thoughtfully. To his credit, he remained silent, too.

Pulling a long breath, John sat up in his chair and stared into space. "I swore when I married her I'd do everything in my power to protect her from being hurt. I've failed her so many times," he grieved.

"That was an unrealistic promise," Sherlock informed him. "You set yourself up for failure. No one can avoid all harm in this dangerous world, no matter how vigilant."

John sighed. "She's had far more than her fair share of harm," he said bitterly. "Why can't I spare her more?"

"Did she ask you to?" Sherlock prompted wisely.

John laughed grimly. "No, of course not. She didn't need to. I'd give my life to keep her safe. I'd do anything to spare her more grief."

"Perhaps protection is not what she wants from you," the detective suggested. John stared at him, at a loss. "Perhaps she has everything she needs from you already," Sherlock continued.

"And what might that be?" John wondered softly, calmer.

"You," Sherlock said.


End file.
